Before and After: 50 Years of Rising Tides and Sinking Marshes

1963 and 2008

Isle de Jean Charles, an island in the Terrebonne Basin of Louisiana has been home to several Native American tribes since the 1800s. The island was 11 miles long and 5 miles wide in the 1950s, a stretch of land that older residents remember well. But the strip of land has been shrinking rapidly since then. Today the island is only a quarter of a mile across, and less than two miles long. These artificially-colored aerial photos from the USGS document how the island has slipped away as the rising ocean and human development sink the marshes.